TORONTO Exactly how weird would you like your baseball to be?For most connoi seurs of the bizarre, Game 4 of the American League Championship Series offered more than enough irreleventia when Cliff Pennington became the first position player in postseason history to pitch.MORE: Top images from the ALCS | Young OK with early exit| Jays face harsh realityThats good, a cool story that everyone will remember, that game that was such a dreadful beating 14-2 for the Royals over the Blue Jays that Torontos backup shortstop had to pitch.All that was left was (closer Roberto) Osuna and (setup man Aaron Sanchez), Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said of the decision to use Pennington. You werent going to use those guys. It was getting so ugly. You try to have a little pride,anyway. I hate to use position players, maybe we made history today, I dont know.History was made when Mark Lowe, who had gotten the final out of the eighth inning and the first two in the ninth, hit Alex Gordon Marlins Womens Custom White Jersey with a pitch. Lowe had thrown 29 pitches, and Gibbons did not want him to go any further, so in came Pennington, who allowed both of his inherited runners to score but kept his own ERA at 0.00.MORE: Five takeaways from Royals' winThats cool, everyone saw it, everyone knows it. How about something a little further afield in the annals of baseball, something nobody will think twice about, but that everyone can appreciate and say, Huh, yeah, I did not know that"?The Royals have you covered. Their fourth run came on a sacrifice fly by Mike Moustakas in the first inning. Their sixth run came on a sacrifice fly by Alcides Escobar in the seventh inning. Their ninth run came on a sacrifice fly by Eric Hosmer later in the seventh inning. Their 10th run came on Escobars second sacrifice fly of the game, in the eighth inning.Thats four sacrifice flies, breaking the single-game playoff record that had been shared by the 1982 Cardinals and 1993 Blue Jays. So, how does it feel to be part of history?Thats Kansas City Royals baseball, said Hosmer, who could not po sibly have had anything else to say. Its what we do.OK, sacrifice flies are weird, but what about something really for the atlas obscura of baseball? Something so ridiculous, its hard to even explain in a coherent fashionthe history that was made?Welcome to a very special branch of baseball history, Liam Hendriks.Coming on in relief of knuckleballer R.A. Dickey in the second inning, with Toronto already down 5-0, Hendriks had an unenviable task: prevent the two runners on base from scoring, and hold the line to keep the Blue Jays in the game.The knuckleballs doing a whole lot of stuff, coming in at 81-82 (mph), Hosmer said. Then youve got a guy throwing 97 out of the pen, it looks a lot harder than the normal 97.Hendriks used that difference in velocity to his advantage, but before he even threw a pitch, the Au Wei-Yin Chen Jersey sie reliever got an out by picking off Escobar at second base. Hendriks said he could not remember the last time he had a pickoff at second base.Hendriks threw a 1-2-3 inning in the third, then gave up a two-out single to Alex Rios in the fourth. Rios stole second, but after a video review, it turned out that his pop-up slide had popped too much, and he had come off the bag for the final out of that frame. Hendriks threw another 1-2-3 inning in the fifth, then one more perfect frame in the sixth.That meant Hendriks had recorded 13 outs while facing only 12 batters, the most outs ever recorded in a postseason game by a pitcher who recorded more outs than batters faced. He broke the record of Jim Lindsey of the 1930 Cardinals, who died in 1963 po sibly never even knowing that he was a World Series record holder.Hendriks knows, because he was told after the game.Thats Marlins Flex Base Custom Black Jersey interesting, Hendriks said, trying to be nice. I didnt really think about that too much. I got lucky because Rios got a good jump off of me. Credit to (Ryan Goins), he kept the tag on, and that review proce s worked for us that time. As long as I can keep guys off base, whatever I can do to keep the team in the game, thats all that matters.The record certainly does not matter, but its baseball at its finest and most ridiculous with its ability to have some kind of history for everything.
